Streetscapes/Rockefeller University, 62nd to 68th Streets Along the East River; From a Child's Death Came a Medical Institute's Birth

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

Published: February 25, 2001

IN 1901 John D. Rockefeller's first grandchild, John Rockefeller McCormick, died of scarlet fever at age 3. Four months later, Rockefeller decided to found an institute devoted to research in medicine. With Rockefeller University in its centennial year, its campus near the East River from 62nd to 68th Streets shows evidence of three building campaigns, and it continues to grow. The 15-acre site is visible to passersby through its high iron fence, but it is open to the public only once a year, for a single day in May.

Although factories overran much of the East River shoreline in the late 19th century, the clifftop stretch from 64th to 67th Street offered poor water access and was not developed. Period photographs show open, uneven ground, used by an athletic club, with a few frame houses and an old chapel.

Rockefeller left his position as active head of the Standard Oil empire in the 1890's to devote his life to philanthropy. His adviser, Frederick T. Gates, had been urging him to create something in the medical field and, after the death of his grandson, Rockefeller pledged $200,000 for what was initially known as the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. His son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., guided much of the planning.

At the time, American medical research was a sometime thing. One institute trustee was Dr. Christian Herter, a leading medical researcher; Herter worked out of a laboratory he had built in his home at 819 Madison Avenue, near 68th Street. (His nephew, also Christian Herter, was appointed Secretary of State by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959.)

At first the institute gave away grants and conducted research in makeshift quarters at 50th Street and Lexington Avenue. An outbreak of meningitis in the winter of 1904-05 led the institute's first director, Dr. Simon Flexner, to develop a serum to fight the disease.

The trustees, headed by Gates, soon began looking at building sites. After considering the small block from 57th to 58th Streets fronting on the East River, Rockefeller gave money to buy the riverfront parcel from 64th to 67th Streets. (Over the years, the institution expanded north and south.)

The first building opened in 1906, at the head of a long drive at the foot of 66th Street, followed in 1910 by a hospital and other buildings, variously designed by York & Sawyer and Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. Early photographs show the hospital with open balconies so patients could be wheeled out -- even in beds -- for fresh air.

The first buildings were set well back from the city proper, behind a tall fence and large planted grounds from what is now York Avenue. Perched high above the East River, the buildings had panoramic views over the water and to Queens. The massive, craggy retaining wall is still a familiar feature on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.

Flexner's staff included Hideyo Noguchi, a Japanese-born bacteriologist, and the Frenchman Alexis Carrel, who became the institute's first Nobel Prize winner, for transplant research, in 1912. (Over the years, the institute's Nobel laureates have included Gunter Blobel in 1999 for research on protein signals, and Paul Greengard in 2000 for research on the brain and the nervous system.)

De Kruif later assisted Sinclair Lewis on Lewis's 1925 novel, ''Arrowsmith,'' itself based loosely on the institute. De Kruif's own 1926 book about medical research, ''Microbe Hunters,'' is still in print.

The institute's buildings remained clustered toward the East River side of the campus until the 1950's, when Wallace Harrison of Harrison & Abramovitz designed several new buildings for staff apartments, offices and a private house for the president. Harrison also designed the distinctive Caspary Auditorium, the domed meeting hall close to York Avenue, which was originally covered in blue mosaic tile.

In 1963 the institute's president, Detlev Bronk, threatened to leave all the new buildings behind. The New York City Transit Authority had planned to build a new subway tunnel to Queens under 64th Street, and Bronk said the tunnel would disturb sensitive testing equipment. A year later the city rerouted the tunnel to 63rd Street.

In 1965 the institute changed its name to Rockefeller University.

THE third period of building began in the 1970's, when Rockefeller University got permission to roof over the F.D.R. Drive. So far, only two structures have been built over the Drive, the Scholars Residence (1987), south of 63rd Street, and the Rockefeller Research Building (1992), north of 64th.

Although New York Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery have completely covered over their frontage above 68th Street -- what had been a sunny, open boulevard of city views -- Rockefeller University's portion is still generally open.

Now the architects Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum are renovating and expanding the Rockefeller University hospital building. The construction scaffolding is visible from far west on 65th Street. The plans call for restoring the peculiar metal and glass marquee of 1910, and also adding two floors on an adjacent wing, for laboratory and mechanical spaces.

Kenneth Drucker, the designer director for the project, says the firm is modeling the expanded portions after the older building, not stone for stone, but by keeping the materials in the same palette -- the buff of the older limestone, the light orange-brown of the brick and the distinctive dark red of the metal roofs.

The architects have also prepared a lateral expansion plan for the hospital, bringing it up to the line of the F.D.R. Drive. Jim Stallard, a spokesman for the university, said that at the moment there are no plans to build out farther over the Drive.

The Rockefeller University grounds are open to the public only once a year, on what the university calls Spring Neighborhood Day. This year the day is Saturday, May 19, when anyone can stroll around the campus.

Photos: Looking east along 66th Street, above, in 1916 toward Rockefeller Institute, showing original building, center, and hospital, to the right. The old hospital building is being renovated and expanded. (Rockefeller University Archives); (Carol Halebian for The New York Times)